Have you ever thought why some of the the small and upcoming businesses remain small and always upcoming but never make it big? May be this is a good food for thought sthat every entrepreneur has to have to answer.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is one among the many steps of customerization. The focus of CRM is to establish relationship with customers on an individual and personalized basis and then to treat different customers differently based on their expectations. CRM is the key to success in the present era and only those organizations can succeed who have been able to build a base of their loyal customers. This is because a loyal customer advocates the company's products much better than the organization itself.

Marketing is an activity, which all organizations do on a continuous basis. In the present scenario of globalization and liberalization, marketing has undergone a metamorphic change to cope with increased competitiveness, changing needs of customers, continuous product up gradation due to change in technology, changing market trends and many more. Because of these continuous changes, the marketing efforts have also slowly shifted from mass marketing to interactive marketing and finally to today's relationship marketing. Hence the emergence of CRM also Customer Relationship Management.

Today, by the time customers walk into your business - or log-on to your website or call your sales center - most already know what they want and how much they're willing to pay. With easy access to mountains of information, today's customers do their homework, and they now have the upper hand in most of the transactions. In response, sellers are bending over backwards to improve offerings and services. Trying to be all things to all buyers, sellers face the harsh reality that brings an old adage to life -

You can please some of the people most of the time and most of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time."

Today, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the key that fulfils the promise of helping sellers - please all of the people (customers) most of the times. As we step over the threshold of the new millennium - the age of "never satisfied" customer, leading enterprises are identifying the need to change from a product-centric business to a customer-centric one. Organizations are slowly waking up to the benefits as well as the challenge of changing processes that are necessary in this age of never satisfied customer.

According to a survey -

It costs 10 times as much to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one.

50 percent of the company's satisfied customers will do business with their competitors and 25 percent of their very satisfied customers will also do business with competitors.

20 percent of the company's loyal customers account for almost 75 percent of their profits.

Now, if the companies even though small in size, would like to retain their customers, the golden path (and the only path) is to make your customers loyal to your products/services. This is where CRM comes into picture. Building loyalty into customers involves understanding the various ways that they are different and using that knowledge to tailor appropriate behaviors towards those customers. To do so, the company must know the details of who the customers are, not just as group or segments of customers but each and every individual customer. Details of whether the customer is profitable, or whether the customer does business with the competitors etc., should be known. This understanding will lead to a successful implementation of CRM.

"Customer Relationship Management is about acquiring, developing and retaining satisfied loyal customer; achieving profitable growth; and creating economic value in a company's brand."

CRM is not a new concept but an age-old practice, which is on the rise because of the benefits it offers, especially in the present marketing scenario. So, CRM today is a discipline as well as a set of discrete software and technologies, which focuses on automating and improving the business processes associated with managing customer relationships in the areas of sales, marketing, customer service and support. CRM helps companies understand, establish and nurture long-term relationships with clients as well as help in retaining current customers. The most important step that an organization has to take in the direction of CRM is to create an interdisciplinary team to review how the organization interacts with each customer and determine how to improve and extend the relationship.

The basic concept of CRM is that it aids businesses use technology and human resources to gain insight into the behavior of customers and the value of those customers, however small or big may be your company.

But, how do small companies identify valuable customers and measure their worth How can small companies successfully develop and implement strategies for managing customer relationships across the customer lifecycle to enhance customer loyalty and increase profitability

The answer to these questions probably lies in understanding the benefits of carrying out a lifetime value analysis of their customers i.e., the emphasis is on enhancing the lifetime value of customers and developing partnerships with present and potential customers. Also, small companies should continuously improve and increase communication between the company and its customers, and also within the company itself. It therefore calls for sharing enterprise information between functions such as sales and marketing, customer service/support, manufacturing, etc., and also enhancement of every point of contact with the customer and proper analysis of Customer Interaction Lifecycle.

At present, more and smaller business companies are adopting various CRM practices as CRM promises numerous benefits - including shorter sales cycles, integrated customer feedback, improved communication, improved response, improved customer knowledge, improved efficiency, better customer tracking, enhanced customer satisfaction and increased loyalty.

All said but not done would be a major hurdle in the path of CRM. Small business companies generally get in the mindset of not-feasible or un-economical, and thus would try to avoid practicing CRM. Taking into consideration the rich benefits that can be reaped as discussed above, the small business companies should take their step forward and reap benefits out of CRM.